Custer with horse and dogsGENERAL CUSTER WITH HIS HORSE VIC, STAG HOUNDS AND DEER HOUNDS.
When we were ready to set out for the West, in October, 1866, our caravan summed up something like this list: My husband's three horses—Jack Rucker, the thoroughbred mare he had bought in Texas, a blooded colt from Virginia named Phil Sheridan—and my own horse, a fast pacer named Custis Lee, the delight of my eyes and the envy of the General's staff while we were in Virginia and Texas; several hounds given to the General by the planters with whom he had hunted deer in Texas; a superb greyhound, his head carried so loftily as he walked his lordly way among the other dogs, that I thought he would have asked to carry his family-tree on his brass collar, could he have spoken for his rights.Last of all, some one had given us the ugliest white bull-dog I ever saw. But in time we came to think that the twist in his lumpy tail, the curve in his bow legs, the ambitious nose, which drew the upper lip above the heaviest of protruding jaws, were simply beauties, for the dog was so affectionate and loyal, that everything which at first seemed a draw-back leaned finally to virtue's side. He was well named "Turk," and a "set to" or so with Byron, the domineering greyhound established his rights, so that it only needed a deep growl and an uprising of the bristles on his back, to recall to the overbearing aristocrat some wholesome lessons given him when the acquaintance began. Turk was devoted to the colt Phil, and the intimacy of the two was comical; Phil repaid Turk's little playful nips at the legs by lifting him in his teeth as high as the feed-box, by the loose skin of his back. But nothing could get a whimper out of him, for he was the pluckiest of brutes. He curled himself up in Phil's stall when he slept, and in traveling was his close companion in the box car. If we took the dog to drive with us, he had to be in the buggy, as our time otherwise would have been constantly engaged in dragging him off from any dog that strutted around him and needed a lesson in humility. When Turk was returned to Phil, after any separation, they greeted each other in a most human way. Turk leaped around the colt, and in turn was rubbed and nosed about with speaking little snorts of welcome. When we came home to this ugly duckling, he usually made a spring and landed in my lap, as if he were the tiniest, silkiest little Skye in dogdom. He half closed his eyes, with that beatific expression peculiar to affectionate dogs, and did his little smile at my husband and me by raising what there was of his upper lip and showing his front teeth. All this with an ignoring of the other dogs and an air of exclusion, as if we three—his master, mistress, and himself—composed all there was of earth worth knowing.
We had two servants, one being Eliza, our faithful colored woman, who had been with us in Virginia and Texas, andhad come home with me to care for my father in his last illness. We had also a worthless colored boy, who had been trained as a jockey in Texas and had returned with the horses. What intellect he had was employed in devising schemes to escape work. Eliza used her utmost persuasive eloquence on him without effect, and failed equally with a set of invectives that had been known heretofore to break the most stubborn case of lethargy. My tender-hearted mother Custer screened him, for he had soon discovered her amazing credulity, and had made out a story of abuses to which he had been subjected that moved her to confide his wrongs to me. Two years before, I too would have dropped a tear over his history; but a life among horses had enlightened me somewhat. Every one knows that a negro will do almost anything to become a jockey. Their bitterest moment is when they find that growing bone and muscle is making avoirdupois and going to cut them off from all that makes life worth living. To reduce their weight, so they can ride at races, they are steamed, and parboiled if necessary. This process our lazy servant described to our mother as having been enforced on him as a torture and punishment, and such a good story did he make out, that he did nothing but lie in the sun and twang an old banjo all summer long, all owing to mother's pity. We had to take him with us, to save her from waiting on him and making reparation for what she supposed had been a life of abuse before he came to us.
Last of all to describe in our party was Diana, the pretty belle of Monroe. The excitement of anticipation gave added brightness to her eyes, and the head, sunning over with a hundred curls, danced and coquetted as she talked of our future among the "brass buttons and epaulets."
My going out from home was not so hard as it had been, for the dear father had gone home, saying in his last words, "Daughter, continue to do as you have done; follow Armstrong everywhere." It had indeed been a temptation to me to use all my influence to induce my husband to resign and accept the places held out to him. I do not recollectthat ambition or a far look into his progress in the future entered my mind. I can only remember thinking with envy of men surrounding us in civil life, who came home to their wives, after every day's business. Even now, I look upon a laborer returning to his home at night with his tin dinner-pail as a creature to be envied, and my imagination follows the husband into his humble house. The wife to whom he returns may have lost much that ambition and success bring, but she has secured for herself a lifetime of happy twilights, when all she cares for is safe under her affectionate eyes.
Our father and mother Custer lived near us, and Sister Margaret and the younger brother, "Bos," were then at home and in school. The parting with his mother, the only sad hour to my blithe husband, tore his heart as it always did, and he argued in vain with her, that, as he had come home after five years of incessant battles, she might look for his safe return again. Each time seemed to be the last to her, for she was so delicate she hardly expected to live to see him again.
The summer had been one of such pleasure to her. Her beloved boy, dashing in and out in his restless manner, was never too absorbed with whatever took up his active mind, to be anything but gentle and thoughtful for her. She found our Eliza a mine of information, and just as willing as mother herself to talk all day about the one topic in common—the General and his war experiences.
Then the dogs and horses, and the stir and life produced by the introduction of ourselves and our belongings into her quiet existence, made her recall the old farm life when her brood of children were all around her. Brother Tom had spent the summer skipping from flower to flower, tasting the sweets of all the rosebud garden of girls in our pretty town. I had already taken to myself a good deal of the mothering of this wild boy, and began to worry, as is the custom of mothers, over the advances of a venturesome woman who was no longer young and playing for high stakes. It was no small matter to me, as I knew Tom would live with us alwaysif he could manage to do so, and my prospective sister-in-law would be my nearest companion. Lad as he was, he escaped, and preserved his heart in an unbroken condition during the summer. Much to our regret, he was appointed to a lieutenancy in a regiment stationed South, after he was mustered out of the volunteer service; but the General succeeded in effecting his transfer to the Seventh Cavalry, and after a short service in the South he joined us at Fort Riley that year.
One of our Detroit friends invited us to go with a party of pretty women, in a special car, to St. Louis; so we had a gay send-off for our new home. I don't remember to have had an anxiety as to thefuture; I was wholly given over to the joy of realizing that the war was over, and, girl-like, now the one great danger was passed, I felt as if all that sort of life was forever ended. At any rate, the magnetic influence of my husband's joyous temperament, which would not look on the dark side, had such power over those around him that I was impelled to look upon our future as he did. In St. Louis we had a round of gayety. The great Fair was then at its best, for every one was making haste to dispel the gloom that our terrible war had cast over the land. There was not a corner of the Fair-ground to which my husband did not penetrate. He took me into all sorts of places to which our pretty galaxy of belles, with their new conquests of St. Louis beaux, had no interest in going—the stalls of the thoroughbred horses—when a chat with the jockeys was included; the cattle, costing per head what, we whispered to each other, would set us up in a handsome income for life and buy a Blue-grass farm with blooded horses, etc., which was my husband's ideal home. And yet I do not remember that money ever dwelt very long in our minds, we learned to have such a royal time on so little.
There was something that always came before the Kentucky farm with its thoroughbreds. If ever he said, "If I get rich, I'll tell you what I'll do," I knew as well before he spoke just what was to follow—in all the twelve years henever altered the first plan—"I'll buy a home for father and mother." They owned their home in Monroe then, but it was not good enough to please him; nothing was good enough for his mother, but the dear woman, with her simple tastes, would have felt far from contented in the sort of home in which her son longed to place her. All she asked was to gather her boys around her so that she could see them every day.
As we wandered round the Fair-grounds, side-shows with their monstrosities came into the General's programme, and the prize pigs were never neglected. If we bent over the pens to see the huge things rolling in lazy contentment, my husband went back to his farm days, and explained what taught him to like swine, in which, I admit, I could not be especially interested. His father had given each son a pig, with the promise exacted in return that they should be daily washed and combed. When the General described the pink and white collection of pets that his father distributed among his sons, swine were no longer swine to me; they were "curled darlings," as he pictured them. And now I recall, that long after he showed such true appreciation of his friend's stock on one of the Blue-grass farms in Kentucky where we visited, two pigs of royal birth, whose ancestors dated back many generations, were given to us, and we sent them home to our farmer brother to keep until we should possess a place of our own, which was one of the mild indulgences of our imagination, and which we hoped would be the diversion of our old age. I think it rather strange that my husband looked so fearlessly into the future. I hardly know how one so active could so calmly contemplate the days when his steps would be slow. We never passed on the street an old man with gray curls lying over his coat-collar, but the General slackened his steps to say in a whisper, "There, Libbie, that's me, forty years from now." And if there happened to be John Anderson's obese old wife by him, toddling painfully along, red and out of breath, he teasingly added, "And that's what you wouldliketo be." It was a never-ending source of argumentthat I would be much more successful in the way of looks if I were not so slender; and as my husband, even when a lad, liked women who were slenderly formed, he loved to torment me, by pointing out to what awful proportions a woman weighing what was to me a requisite number of pounds sometimes arrived in old age.
A tournament was given in the great amphitheatre of the Fair building in St. Louis, which was simply delightful to us. The horsemanship so pleased my husband that he longed to bound down into the arena, take a horse, and tilt with their long lances at the rings. Some of the Confederate officers rode for the prizes, and their knights' costume and good horses were objects of momentary envy, as they recalled the riding academy exercises at West Point. Finally, the pretty ceremony of crowning the Queen of Love and Beauty by the successful knight ended a real gala day to us. At night a ball at the hotel gave us an opportunity to be introduced to the beautiful woman, who sat on a temporary throne in the dancing-hall, and we thought her well worth tilting lances for, and that nothing could encourage good horsemanship like giving as a prize the temporary possession of a pretty girl.
While in St. Louis we heard Mr. Lawrence Barrett for the first time. He was of nearly the same age as my husband, and after three years' soldiering in our war, as a captain in the Twenty-eighth Massachusetts Infantry, had returned to his profession, full of ambition and the sort of "go" that called out instant recognition from the General.
Mr. Barrett, in recalling lately the first time he met General Custer, spoke of the embarrassing predicament in which he was placed by the impetuous determination of one whom from that hour he cherished as his warmest friend. He was playing "Rosedale," and my husband was charmed with his rendering of the hero's part. He recalled for years the delicate manner with which the lover allows his wounded hand to be bound, and the subtle cunning with which he keeps the fair minister of his hurts winding and unwinding the bandages.Then Mr. Barrett sang a song in the play, which the General hummed for years afterward. I remember his going pell-mell into the subject whenever we met, even when Mr. Barrett was justifiably glowing with pride over his success in the legitimate drama, and interrupting him to ask why he no longer played "Rosedale." The invariable answer that the play required extreme youth in the hero, had no sort of power to stop the continued demand for his favorite melodrama. After we had seen the play—it was then acted for the first time—the General begged me to wait in the lobby until he had sought out Mr. Barrett to thank him, and on our return from the theatre we lay in wait, knowing that he stopped at our hotel. As he was going quietly to his room—reserved even then, boy that he was, with not a trace of the impetuous, ardent lover he had so lately represented before the foot-lights—off raced the General up the stairs, two steps at a time, to capture him. He demurred, saying his rough traveling suit of gray was hardly presentable in a drawing-room, but the General persisted, saying, "The old lady told me I must seize you, and go you must, for I don't propose to return without fulfilling her orders." Mr. Barrett submitted, and was presented to our party, who had accompanied us on the special car to St. Louis. The gray clothes were forgotten in a moment, in the reception we gave him; but music came out from the dining-room, and all rose to go, as Mr. Barrett supposed, to our rooms. The General took a lady on his arm, I, at my husband's suggestion, put my hand on Mr. Barrett's arm, and before he had realized it, he was being marched into the brilliantly lighted ballroom, and bowing from force of capture before the dais on which sat the Queen of Love and Beauty.
All this delighted the General. Unconventional himself, he nothing heeded the chagrin of Mr. Barrett over his inappropriate garb, and chuckled like a schoolboy over his successful raid. I think Mr. Barrett was not released until he pleaded the necessity for time to work. He was then reading and studying far into the night, to make up for the lapse inhis profession that his army life had caused. He was not so absorbed in his literary pursuits, however, that he did not take in the charm of thosebeautifulSt. Louis girls, and we three, in many a jolly evening since, have gone back to the beauty of the bewitching belles, as they floated by us in that ballroom or paused to capture the newRichmondson their already crowded field. Mr. Barrett even remembers that the Queen of Love and Beauty vouchsafed him the eighth of a dance—for her royal highness dispensed favors by piecemeal to the waiting throng about her throne.
Our roving life brought us in contact with actors frequently. If the General found that Mr. Barrett was to play in any accessible city, he hurried me into my traveling-gown, flung his own dress-coat and my best bonnet in a crumpled mass into a little trunk, and off we started in pursuit. It is hard to speak fittingly of the meeting of those two men. They joyed in each other as women do, and I tried not to look when they met or parted, while they gazed with tears into each other's eyes, and held hands like exuberant girls. Each kept track of the other's movements, through the papers, and rejoiced at every success, while Mr. Barrett, with the voice my husband thought perfect in intonation and expression, always called to him the moment they met, "Well, old fellow, hard at work making history, are you?"
A few evenings since I chanced to see Mr. Barrett's dresser, the Irish "Garry," who had charge of his costumes in those days when the General used to haunt the dressing-room in the last winter we were together in New York. AsCassiushe entered the room in armor, and found his "old man Custer" waiting for him. Garry tells me that my husband leaped toward the mailed and helmeted soldier, and gave him some rousing bangs on the corseleted chest, for they sparred like boys. Mr. Barrett, parrying the thrust, said, "Custer, old man, you ought to have one of these suits of armor for your work." "Ye gods, no!" said the General, in mimic alarm; "with that glistening breast-plate as a target, every arrow would be directed at me. I'd rather go naked than in that!"
Maps of KansasKANSAS IN 1866 AND KANSAS TO-DAY.In 1866 there were three hundred miles of railroad; in 1886, six thousand one hundred and forty-four.
WESTWARD HO!—FIGHTING DISSIPATION IN THE SEVENTH CAVALRY—GENERAL CUSTER'S TEMPTATIONS.
Thejunketing and frolic at St. Louis came to an end in a few days, and our faces were again turned westward to a life about as different from the glitter and show of a gay city in a holiday week as can be imagined. Leavenworth was our first halt, and its well-built streets and excellent stores surprised us. It had long been the outfitting place for our officers. The soldiers drew supplies from the military post, and the officers furnished themselves with camp equipage from the city. Here also they bought condemned ambulances, and put them in order for traveling-carriages for their families. I remember getting a faint glimmer of the climate we were about to endure, by seeing a wagon floored, and its sides lined with canvas, which was stuffed to keep out the cold, while a little sheet-iron stove was firmly fixed at one end, with a bit of miniature pipe protruding through the roof. The journey from Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fé, New Mexico, then took six weeks. Everything was transported in the great army wagons called prairie-schooners. These were well named, as the two ends of the wagon inclined upward, like the bow and stern of a fore-and-after. It is hard to realize how strangely a long train of supplies for one of the distant posts looked, as it wound slowly over the plains. The blue wagon-beds, with white canvas covers rising up ever so high, disclosed, in the small circle where they were drawn together at the back, all kinds of material for the clothing and feeding of the army in the distant Territories. The number of mules to a wagon varies; sometimes there are four,and again six. The driver rides the near-wheel mule. He holds in his hand a broad piece of leather, an inch and a half in width, which divides over the shoulders of the lead or pilot mule, and fastens to the bit on either side of his mouth. The leaders are widely separated. A small hickory stick, about five feet long, called the jockey-stick, not unlike a rake-handle, is stretched between a pilot and his mate. This has a little chain at either end, and is attached by a snap or hook to the bit of the other leader.
When the driver gives one pull on the heavy strap, the pilot mule veers to the left, and pulls his mate. Two quick, sudden jerks mean to the right, and he responds, and pushes his companion accordingly; and in this simple manner the ponderous vehicle and all the six animals are guided. . . . The most spirited mules are selected from the train for leaders. They cannot be reached by the whip, and the driver must rely upon the emphasis he puts into his voice to incite them to effort. They know their names, and I have seen them respond to a call, even when not accompanied by the expletives that seem to be composed especially for this branch of charioteering. The driver of our mules naturally suppressed his invectives in my presence. The most profane soldier holds his tongue in a vise when he is in the presence of a woman, but he is sorely put to it to find a substitute for the only language he considers a mule will heed. I have seen our driver shake his head and move his jaws in an ominous manner, when the provoking leaders took a skittish leap on one side of the trail, or turned round and faced him with a protest against further progress. They were sometimes so afraid of buffalo, and always of Indians, they became rebellious to such a degree he was at his wits' end to get any further go out of them. It was in vain he called out, "You Bet, there!" "What are you about, Sal?" He plainly showed and said that he found "such 'ere tongue-lashing wouldn't work worth a rap with them vicious creeturs."
The driver, if he is not a stolid Mexican, takes much pride in his mules. By some unknown means, poor as he is, hepossesses himself of fox or small coyote tails, which he fastens to their bridle, and the vagaries in the clipping of the poor beasts' tails, would set the fashion to a Paris hair-dresser. They are shaved a certain distance, and then a tuft is left, making a bushy ring. This is done twice, if Bet or Sal is vouchsafed an appendage long enough to admit of it; while the tuft on the end, though of little use to intimidate flies, is a marvel of mule-dudism. The coats of the beasts, so valued sometimes, shine like the fine hair of a good horse. Alas! not when, in the final stages of a long march, the jaded, half-starved beasts dragged themselves over the trail. Driver and lead mules even, lose ambition under the scorching sun, and with the insufficient food and long water famines.
The old reliability of a mule-team is the off-wheeler. It is his leathery sides that can be most readily reached by the whip called a "black-snake," and when the descent is made into a stream with muddy bed, the cut is given to this faithful beast, and on his powerful muscles depends the wrench that jerks the old schooner out of a slough. The nigh or saddle mule does his part in such an emergency, but he soon reasons that, because he carries the driver, not much more is expected of him.
Covered wagon with six horsesCONESTOGA WAGON, OR PRAIRIE-SCHOONER.
The General and I took great interest in the names given to the animals that pulled our traveling-wagon or hauled the supplies. As we rode by, the voice of the driver bringing out the name he had chosen, and sometimes affectionately, made us sure that the woman for whom the beast was christened was the sweetheart of the apparently prosaic teamster. I was avowedly romantic, and the General was equally so, though, after the fashion of men, he did not proclaim it. Our place at the head of the column was sometimes vacant, either because we were delayed for our luncheon, or because my husband remained behind to help the quartermaster or the head teamster get the train over a stream. It was then that we had the advantage of hearing the names conferred on the mules. They took in a wide range of female nomenclature, and we found it great fun to watch the family life ofone human being and his six beasts. My husband had the utmost respect for a mule's sense. When I looked upon them as dull, half-alive animals, he bade me watch how deceitful were appearances, as they showed such cunning, and evinced the wisdom of a quick-witted thoroughbred, when apparently they were unobserving, sleepy brutes. It was the General who made me notice the skill and rapidity with which a group of six mules would straighten out what seemed to be a hopeless tangle of chains and harness, into which they had kicked themselves when there was a disturbance among them. One crack of the whip from the driver who had tethered them after a march, accompanied by a plain statement of his opinion of such "fools," would send the whole collection wide apart, and it was but a twinkling before they extricated themselves from what I thought a hopeless mess. No chains or straps were broken, and a meek, subdued look pervading the group left not a trace of the active heels that a moment before had filled the air. "There," the General used to say, "don't ever flatter yourself again that a mule hasn't sense. He's got more wisdom than half the horses in the line." It took a good while to convince me, as a more logy-looking animal can hardly be found than the army mule, which never in his existence is expected to go off from a walk, or to vary his life, from the day he is first harnessed until he drops by the way, old or exhausted.
At the time we were first on the Plains, many of the teamsters were Mexicans, short, swarthy, dull, and hardly a grade above the animal. The only ambition of these creatures seemed to be to vie with one another as to who could snap the huge "black-snake" the loudest. They learned to whisk the thong at the end around the ears of a shirking off leader, and crack the lash with such an explosive sound that I never got over jumping in my whole Plains life. I am sorry to say my high-strung horse usually responded with a spring that sent me into thin air anywhere between his ears and his tail, with a good deal of uncertainty as to where I should alight. I suspect it was an innocent little amusement of the drivers,when occasionally we remained behind at nooning, and had to ride swiftly by the long train to reach the head of the column.
The prairie-schooner disappeared with the advancing railroad; but I am glad to see that General Meigs has perpetuated its memory, by causing this old means of transportation to be made one of the designs in the beautiful frieze carved around the outside of the Pension Office at Washington. Ungainly and cumbersome as these wagons were, they merit some such monument, as part of the history of the early days of frontier life in our country. We were in the West several years before the railroad was completed to Denver, and the overland trains became an every-day sight to us. Citizens used oxen a great deal for transportation, and there is no picture that represents the weariness and laggard progress of life like an ox-train bound for Santa Fé or Denver. The prairie-schooner might set out freshly painted, or perhaps washed in a creek, but it soon became gray with layer upon layer of alkali dust. The oxen—well, nothing save a snail can move more slowly, and the exhaustion of these beasts, after weeks of uninterrupted travel, was pitiful. Imagine, also, the unending vigil when the trains were insecurely guarded; for in those days there was an immense unprotected frontier, and seemingly only a handful of cavalry. The regiments looked well on the roster, but there were in reality but few men. A regiment should number twelve hundred enlisted men; but at no time, unless during the war, does the recruiting officer attempt to fill it to the maximum; seventy men to a company is a large number. The desertions during the first years of the reorganization of the army after the war thinned the ranks constantly. Recruits could not be sent out fast enough to fill up the companies. The consequence was, that all those many hundred miles of trail where the Government undertook to protect citizens who carried supplies to settlements and the mines, as well as its own trains of material for building new posts, and commissary and quartermaster's stores for troops, were terribly exposed and very poorly protected.
"The Indians were, unfortunately, located on the great highway of Western travel; and commerce, not less than emigration, demanded their removal." There are many conflicting opinions as to the course pursued to clear the way; but I only wish to speak now of the impression the trains made upon me, as we constantly saw the long, dusty, exhausted-looking column wending its serpentine way over the sun-baked earth. A group of cavalry, with their drooping horses, rode in front and at the rear. The wagon-master was usually the very quintessence of valor, It is true he formed such a habit of shooting that he grew indiscriminate, and should any of the lawless desperadoes whom he hired as teamsters or trainmen ruffle his blood, kept up to boiling-heat by suspense, physical exposure, and exasperating employees, he knew no way of settling troubles except the effectual quietus that a bullet secures. I well remember my husband and Tom, who dearly loved to raise my indignation, and create signs of horror and detestation at their tales, walking me down to the Government train to see a wagon-master who had shot five men. He had emigrated from the spot where he bade fair to establish a private cemetery with his victims. No one needed a reason for his sudden appearance after the number of his slain was known. And yet no questions were put as to his past. He made a capital wagon-master; he was obedient to his superiors, faithful, and on time every morning, and the prestige of his past record answered so well with the citizen employees, that his pistol remained unused in the holster.
It seemed to be expected that the train-master would be a villain. Whatever was their record as to the manner of arranging private disputes, a braver class of men never followed a trail, and some of them were far superior to their chance lot. Their tender care of women who crossed in these slow-moving ox-trains, to join their husbands, ought to be commemorated. I have somewhere read one of their remarks when a girl, going to her mother, had been secreted in a private wagon and there was no knowledge of her presenceuntil the Indians were discovered to be near. "Tain't no time to be teamin' women folks over the trail with sech a fearsom sperit for Injuns as I be." He, like some of the bravest men I have known, spoke of himself as timid, while he knew no fear. It certainly unnerved the most valiant man when Indians were lurking near, to realize the fate that hung over women entrusted to their care. In a later portion of my story occurs an instance of an officer hiding the woman whose husband had asked him to take her into the States, even before firing a shot at the adversary, as he knew with what redoubled ferocity the savage would fight, at sight of the white face of a woman. It makes the heart beat, even to look at a picture of the old mode of traversing the highway of Western travel. The sight of the pictured train, seemingly so peacefully lumbering on its sleepy way, the scarcely revolving wheels, creaking out a protest against even that effort, recalls the agony, the suspense, the horror with which every inch of that long route has been made. The heaps of stones by the wayside, or the buffalo bones, collected to mark the spot where some man fell from an Indian arrow, are now disappearing. The hurricanes beating upon the hastily prepared memorials have scattered the bleached bones of the bison, and rolled into the tufted grass the few stones with which the train-men, at risk of their own lives, have delayed long enough to mark their comrade's grave.
The faded photographs or the old prints of those overland trains speak to me but one story. Instantly I recall the hourly vigilance, the restless eyes scanning the horizon, the breathless suspense, when the pioneers or soldiers knew from unmistakable signs that the Indian was lying in wait. In what contrast to the dull, logy, scarcely moving oxen were these keen-eyed heroes, with every nerve strained, every sense on the alert. And how they were maddened by the fate that consigned them, at such moments, to the mercy of "dull, driven cattle." When I have seen officers and soldiers lay their hands lovingly on the neck of their favorite horse, and perhaps, when no one was near to scoff at sentiment,say to me, "He saved my life," I knew well what a man felt when his horse took fire at knowledge of danger to his rider and sped on the wings of the wind, till he was lost to his pursuers, a tiny black speck on the horizon. The pathos of a soldier's parting with his horse moved us to quick sympathy. It often happens that a trooper retains the same animal through his entire enlistment, and it comes to be his most intimate friend. There is nothing he will not do to provide him with food; if the forage runs low or the grazing is insufficient, stealing for his horse is reckoned a virtue among soldiers. Imagine, then, the anxiety, the real suffering, with which a soldier watches his faithful beast growing weaker day by day, from exhaustion or partial starvation. He walks beside him to spare his strength, and finally, when it is no longer possible to keep up with the column, and the soldier knows how fatal the least delay may be in an Indian country, it is more pitiful than almost any sight I recall, the sadness of his departure from the skeleton, whose eyes follow his master in wondering affection, as he walks away with the saddle and accoutrements. It is the most merciful farewell if a bullet is lodged in the brain of the famished or exhausted beast, but some one else than his sorrowing master has to do the trying deed.
This is not the last act in the harrowing scene. The soldier overtakes the column, loaded down with his saddle, if the train is too far away to deposit it in the company wagon. Then begins a tirade of annoying comments to this man, still grieving over the parting with his best friend. No one can conceive what sarcasm and wit can proceed from a column of cavalry. Many of the men are Irish, and their reputation for humor is world-wide. "Hullo, there! joined the doe-boys, eh?" "How do you like hoofing it?" are tame specimens of the remarks from these tormenting tongues; such a fusillade of sneers is followed not long after by perhaps the one most gibing of all flinging himself off from his horse, and giving his mount to the one he has done his best to stir into wrath. A cavalryman hates, beyond any telling, enforcedpedestrianism, and "Share and share alike" is a motto that our Western soldiers keep in use.
If the wagons held merchandise only, by which the pioneer hoped to grow rich, the risk and suspense attending these endless marches were not worth commemorating; but the bulk of the freight was the actual necessities of life. Conceive, if you can, how these brave men felt themselves chained, as they drove or guarded the food for those living far in advance. There were not enough to admit of a charge on the enemy, and the defensive is an exasperating position for a soldier or frontiersman. He longs to advance on the foe; but no such privilege was allowed them, for in these toilsome journeys they had often to use precautions to hide themselves. If Indians were discovered to be roaming near, the camp was established, trains corralled, animals secured inside a temporary stockade; the fires for coffee were forbidden, for smoke rises like a funnel, and hangs out an instant signal in that clear air. Even the consoling pipe was smoked under a sage-bush or in a hollow, if there happened to be a depression of the ground. Few words were spoken, the loud oaths sank into low mutterings, and the bray of a hungry mule, the clank of wagon-chains, or the stamping of cattle on the baked earth, sounded like thunder in the ears of the anxious, expectant men.
Fortunately, our journey in these trains was not at once forced upon us at Leavenworth. The Kansas Pacific Railroad, projected to Denver, was built within ten miles of Fort Riley, and it was to be the future duty of the Seventh Cavalry to guard the engineers in building the remainder of the road out to the Rocky Mountains. It did not take us long to purchase an outfit in the shops, for, as usual, our finances were low, and consequently our wants were curtailed. We had the sense to listen to a hint from some practical officer who had been far beyond railroads, and buy a cook-stove the first thing, and this proved to be the most important of our possessions when we reached our post, so far from the land of shops. Not many hours after we left Leavenworth, thesettlements became farther and farther apart, and we began to realize that we were actual pioneers. Kansas City was then but a small town, seemingly with a hopeless future, as the bluffs rose so steeply from the river, and even when the summit was reached, the ups and downs of the streets were discouraging. It seemed, then, as if it would never be worth while to use it as a site for a town; there would be a lifetime of grading. It is very easy to become a city forefather in such a town, for in the twenty-one years since then, it has grown into a city of over 132,000 inhabitants—but they are still grading. The lots which we could have had almost for the asking, sell now for $1,000 a front foot. Topeka, the capital, showed no evidence of its importance, except the little circle of stars that surrounded it on our atlas. There were but three towns beyond Fort Riley then, and those were built, if I may so express it, of canvas and dug-outs.
Our railroad journey came to an end about ten miles from Fort Riley. The laborers were laying track from that point. It had been a sort of gala day, for General Sherman, on one of his tours of inspection of the frontier posts, had been asked by railroad officials to drive the final spike of the division of the road then finished. We found a wagon waiting for our luggage, and an ambulance to carry us the rest of the journey. These vehicles are not uncomfortable when the long seats on either side are so arranged that they make a bed for the ill or wounded by spreading them out, but as traveling conveyances I could not call them a success. The seats are narrow, with no back to speak of, and covered with carriage-cloth, which can keep you occupied, if the country is rough, in regaining the slippery surface for any number of miles at a stretch. Fort Riley came in sight when we were pretty well tired out. It was my first view of a frontier post. I had either been afraid to confess my ignorance, or so assured there was but one variety of fort, and the subject needed no investigation, that Fort Riley came upon me as a great surprise. I supposed, of course, it would be exactly like Fortress Monroe, with stone walls, turrets for the sentinels, and a deepmoat. As I had heard more and more about Indians since reaching Kansas, a vision of the enclosure where we would eventually live was a great comfort to me. I could scarcely believe that the buildings, a story and a half high, placed around a parade-ground, were all there was of Fort Riley. The sutler's store, the quartermaster and commissary storehouses, and the stables for the cavalry horses, were outside the square, near the post, and that was all. No trees, and hardly any signs of vegetation except the buffalo-grass that curled its sweet blades close to the ground, as if to protect the nourishment it held from the blazing sun. The post was beautifully situated on a wide plateau, at the junction of the Republican and Smoky Hill rivers. The Plains, as they waved away on all sides of us, like the surface of a vast ocean, had the charm of great novelty, and the absence of trees was at first forgotten in the fascination of seeing such an immense stretch of country, with the soft undulations of green turf rolling on, seemingly, to the setting sun. The eye was relieved by the fringe of cottonwood that bordered the rivers below us.
Though we came afterward to know, on toilsome marches under the sweltering sun, when that orb was sometimes not even hidden for one moment in the day by a grateful cloud, but the sky was spread over as a vast canopy of dazzling blue, that enthusiasm would not outlast such trials, still, a rarely exultant feeling takes possession of one in the gallops over the Plains, when in early spring they are a trackless sea of soft verdure. And the enthusiasm returns when the campaign for the summer is over, and riding is taken up for pleasure. My husband was full of delight over the exquisite haze that covered the land with a faint purple light, and exclaimed, "Now I begin to realize what all that transparent veil of faint color means in Bierstadt's paintings of the Rocky Mountains and the West." But we had little time to take in atmospheric effects, as evening was coming on and we were yet to be housed, while servants, horses, dogs and all of us were hungry after our long drive. The General halted thewagon outside the post, and left us to go and report to the commanding officer.
At that time I knew nothing of the hospitality of a frontier post, and I begged to remain in the wagon until our quarters were assigned us in the garrison. Up to this time we had all been in splendid spirits; the novelty, the lovely day and exhilarating air, and all the possibilities of a future with a house of our own, or, rather, one lent to us by Uncle Sam, seemed to fill up a delightful cup to the brim. We sat outside the post so long—at least it seemed so to us—and grew hungrier and thirstier, that there were evident signs of mutiny. The truth is, whenever the General was with us, with his determination of thinking that nothing could exceed his surroundings, it was almost impossible to look upon anything except in the light that he did. He gave color to everything, with his hopeful views. Eliza sat on the seat with the driver, and both muttered occasional hungry words, but our Diana and I had the worst of it. We had bumped over the country, sometimes violently jammed against the framework of the canvas cover, and most of the time sliding off from the slippery cushions upon the insulted dogs—for of course the General had begged a place for two of them. He had kept them in order all the way from the termination of the railroad; but now that he was absent, Turk and Byron renewed hostilities, and in the narrow space they scrambled and snarled and sprang at each other. When the General came back he found the little hands of our curly-headed girl clenched over the collar of Byron at one end of the ambulance, while Turk sat on my lap, swelling with rage because my fingers were twisted in the chain that held him, as I sat at the door shaking with terror. It was quick work to jerk the burly brute out of the door, and end our troubles for the time; but the General, after quieting our panic, threw us into a new one by saying we must make up our minds to be the guests of the commanding officer. Tired, travel-stained, and unaccustomed to what afterward became comparatively easy, we were driven to one of the quarters and made our entranceamong strangers. I then realized, for the first time, that we had reached a spot where the comforts of life could not be had for love or money.
It is a strange sensation to arrive at a place where money is of little use in providing shelter, and here we were beyond even the commonest railroad hotel. Mrs. Gibbs, who received us, was put to a severe test that night. Already a room in her small house had been prepared for General Sherman, who had arrived earlier in the day, and now there were five of us bearing down upon her. I told her how I had begged to be allowed to go into quarters, even though there were no preparations, not even a fireplace where Eliza could have cooked us food enough over the coals to stay hunger; but she assured me that, having been on the Plains before the war, she was quite accustomed to a state of affairs where there was nothing to do but quarter yourself upon strangers; and then gave up her own room to our use. From that night—which was a real trial to me, because I felt so keenly the trouble we caused them all—dates the beginning of a friendship that has lasted through the darkest as well as the brightest hours of my life. I used to try to remember afterward, when for nine years we received and entertained strangers who had nowhere else to go, the example of undisturbed hospitality shown me by my first friend on the frontier.
The next day my husband assumed command of the garrison, and our few effects were moved into a large double house built for the commanding officer. There were parlors on one side, whose huge folding doors were flung open, and made our few articles of furniture look lonely and meagre. We had but six wooden chairs to begin with, and when, a few miles more of the railroad being completed, a party of one hundred and fifty excursionists arrived, I seated six of them—yes, seven, for one was tired enough to sit on a trunk—and then concluded I would own up that in the larger rooms of the house, into which they looked significantly, there were no more chairs concealed. I had done my best, and tried to make up for not seating or feeding them, by verybusy talking. Meanwhile there were incessant inquiries for the General. It seems that he had begun that little trick of hiding from strangers, even then. He had seen the advancing column of tourists, and fled. One of the servants finally unearthed him, and after they had gone and he found that I had been so troubled to think I could do nothing for the citizens, and so worried because he wasnon est, he did not leave me in such strait again until I had learned to adapt myself to the customs of the country where the maxim that "every man's house is his castle" is a fallacy.
The officers who had garrisoned the post began to move out as our own Seventh Cavalry officers reported for duty. The colonel of the regiment arrived, and ranked us out of our quarters, in this instance much to our relief, as the barrack of a building would never fill up from the slow rate at which our belongings increased. This army regulation, to which I have elsewhere referred, was then new to me. The manner in which the Government sees fit to arrange quarters is still amusing to me, but I suppose no better plan has ever been thought out. In the beginning of a well-built post, there is but little choice. It is the aim to make the houses, except that of the commanding officer, exactly alike. From time to time new quarters are built. The original plan is not followed; possibly a few improvements are added to the newer houses. Ah! then the disturbance ensues! Fort Vancouver, in Washington Territory, is one of the old posts, quite interesting from the heterogeneous collection of quarters added through fifty years. I was spending a day or two, in 1875, with my husband's niece, whose husband was some distance down on the list, and consequently occupied a low log building, that dated back no one knows how far. Even in that little cabin they were insecure, for in reply to my question, "Surely you are permanently fixed, and won't be moved," they pathetically answered: "Not by any means! We live from hour to hour in uncertainty, and there are worse quarters than these, which we walk by daily with dread, as —— ranks us, and he is going to be married, so out we go!"
Assigning quarters according to rank goes on smoothly for a time, but occasionally an officer reports for duty who ranks everyone. Not long ago this happened at a distant post, and the whole line went down like a row of bricks, as eight officers' families were ousted by his arrival, the lowest in rank having to move out one of the non-commissioned officers who had lived in a little cabin with two rooms. If possible, in choosing a time to visit our frontier posts, let this climax of affairs be avoided. Where there is little to vary life the monotony is apt to be deeply stirred by private rages, which would blow away in smoke if there was anything else to think of. It is rather harrowing to know that some one has an eye on the home you have furnished with your own means. I could hardly blame a man I knew, who, in an outburst of wrath concerning an officer who had at last uprooted him, secretly rejoiced that a small room that had been the object of envy, having been built at the impoverished post of refuse lumber from the stables, was unendurable on a warm day; and the new possessor was left to find it out when he had settled himself in the coveted house.